India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Former IPS officer Julio Rebeiro has questioned Delhi Police Commissioner S N Srivastava why BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma’s “communal” speeches were ignored while probing the northeast Delhi riots.
He has raised the question in an open letter he mailed to Delhi Police Commission on Wednesday after the latter responded to Rebeiro’s open letter to him a few days ago. Srivastava wrote the open letter after phoning Rebeiro two days ago in which he(Srivastava) justified the police probe going on into the riots.
While praising the gesture of Srivastava for giving him a call and latter on replying through email, Rebeiro said that he(Srivastava) had not addressed his “doubts” with regard to Delhi police investigators ignoring the “communal” speeches of the three BJP leaders.
“I realise that uit is difficult,indeed impossible, to justify the licence given to the three BJP stalwarts-licence to rant, rave and threaten those who were peacefully protesting perceived wrongs. If the speakers were Muslims or Leftists, the police would have surely taken them in for sedition”, Rebeiro, a former Mumbai Police Commissioner, wrote.
Stating that Srivastava “doubted the patriotism” of activists Harsh Mander and DU professor Apoorvanand whom he (Rebeiro) had mentioned as “true patriots”, Rebeiro said, “Harsh and Apoorvanand are Gandhians. I should have remembered that Gandhians have lost favour with this regime!”
Stating that how he would “dispel the doubts that your retired brother officers still have about Delhi Police investigation in the northeast Delhi riots? “, Rebeiro said in his letter, “I would quickly file the chargesheets in all the 753 cases, including specially the conspiracy case registered by your Special Cell and get the evidence authenticated in a court of law. More importantly, I would not prolong the UAPA case by arresting persons just a day or two before the time limit expires for filing the chargesheet”.
In his first open letter to Srivstava, Rebeiro had stated that Delhi Police was taking action against “peaceful protesters” while ignoring the BJP leaders who made incendiary speeches in build up to the violence while activists like Harsh Mander and Apporvanand had been implicated in criminal cases.
